


Baggage

by mithrel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blanket Permission, M/M, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-23
Updated: 2009-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 1x06: Skin.  They don’t talk about things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baggage

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Hm?” His brother looked over from the driver’s seat. “Tell you what?”

“That you resented me.”

“What?” Dean shot a look at him, before focusing on the road again.

“That shapeshifter, it…well I told you it was downloading your thoughts.”

“And?”

“Well it…said a bunch of stuff.” He shouldn’t even be bringing this up. They didn’t _talk_ about things, Dean especially. He might be weirded out by something using his form to hurt people, but he would ignore it, like always. And Sam couldn’t blame him for keeping secrets; after all, he still didn’t know the truth about Jessica, or…other things.

“What kind of stuff?” Dean’s voice was level, but his hands tightened on the wheel.

Sam thought back. “That I got to go to college, and you had to stay home. That I abandoned you and Dad, and you had to stay and give up anything you wanted to do with your life.”

“It was jerking you around.”

Sam ignored him. “That you were jealous, of the fact that I had a normal life and friends.”

Dean scoffed. “Who wants to be normal? Our whole family are freaks.”

Sam nodded. “It said that too, that you were a freak and everyone was going to leave you.”

Dean refused to look at him. “It was screwing with you, OK, can we just drop it?”

“No.” They had avoided talking about things for long enough. “Dad didn’t ditch you; something happened to him. And if you’d been with him the same thing would have happened to you.”

“I can take care of myself!” Dean snapped.

“Yeah, I know. But Dad’s been doing this a hell of a lot longer than either of us, and it got him. What makes you think you could have stopped it?”

“I should have been there anyway!” His brother’s knuckles were white on the wheel, and he was staring fixedly at the road. “I should have been there! _You_ should have been there, instead of off playing Ivy League!”

“Look, so I left, alright. I’m not sorry I did. It was driving me insane. I couldn’t deal with all the…the weirdness and the secrecy and the paranoia. But I’m back now.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, and all it took was Dad going missing.”

“It’s not my fault! I just wanted to be normal!” Normal; not always on the move, learning to use a shotgun before he was old enough to drive, never able to confide in anyone, because his friends wouldn’t understand and his family didn’t discuss things. Not wanting to do things with his brother that would send him to hell.

“Yeah, well, neither of us is normal.”

Sam didn’t answer.

“Did it say anything else?” Dean demanded suddenly.

“Did what say anything else?” Sam asked, confused by the non-sequitur.

“The shapeshifter, did it say anything else?” Dean’s tone was urgent, bordering on panicked.

“I thought it was just jerking me around,” Sam pointed out.

“Well, yeah, sure, but did it say anything else?”

Sam looked suspiciously at his brother. He was acting…almost guilty, but Dean was never guilty. “Like what?”

“I don’t know! I’m not a shapeshifter trying to fuck with the family of the people I impersonate!”

“No,” Sam said. “It didn’t say anything else.”

Dean’s sigh of relief was almost inaudible, but Sam heard it.

He sighed, too. They didn’t talk about things. And after everything they’d seen the both of them had a hell of a lot of baggage. Sooner or later it was going to bury them.


End file.
